A red line

A red line

Sceptics are likely to dismiss Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed’s detention this week as one more iteration of the Pakistani intelligence services’ well-worn smoke-and-mirrors show on terrorism. Little of actual consequence has happened other than the placement of new signage on some Lashkar premises; no criminal charges have been pressed, and none are expected. It is, however, of significance that Islamabad has felt compelled to put on an act at all. Though there has been speculation that the action may have been intended to avert United States sanctions, the evidence is less than compelling. None of the elements of the process the United States follows before imposing sanctions had been initiated. Though Pakistan was indeed not in compliance with commitments it had made to the multinational Financial Action Task Force against terrorism, that body has no punitive powers. Thus, Pakistan had no immediate pressing reason to act — and thereby hangs a story. Ten years ago, as the central government of President Asif Ali Zardari struggled to keep Saeed in prison after 26/11, now-Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif’s provincial government in Punjab sabotaged his incarceration. Shahbaz Sharif, the prime minister’s brother and Punjab chief minister, correctly assessed that jihadists would rally support around the party. Now, though, the scenario has changed. The Sharifs are grievously weakened by revelations, from the Panama Papers, of their overseas property holdings. Punjab’s jihadists have turned on their rule. In large swathes of the country, state authority has long disappeared; now the anchor of the political system itself seems set to be uprooted. For a Pakistan seeking to revive its fragile economic fortunes, this is bad — even catastrophic — news.
It is of no small significance that the sole press conference on Saeed’s incarceration was held by the Inter-Services Public Relations, the Pakistan Army’s public-relations wing, not the government. It is clear that the army is not seeking a confrontation with the Lashkar-e-Taiba; Saeed could have mobilised large-scale protests but did not do so, a clear sign that a deal has been struck. The most plausible explanation is that the army seeks to signal, both to the West and to worried allies like China, that it is in charge of its proxies; that the tail does not, as many fear, wag the dog. The red line Pakistan is seeking to draw is for its own survival, but New Delhi has equities in watching just where the pen meanders. .